Let’s get rid of one-dimensional Globalisation

We hear far, far too much about the supposed necessity of ‘embracing globalisation’ but for some the embrace is much closer than others and clings with a deathly chill. I refer to those workers whose jobs have been stolen and shipped abroad by the owners and managers of multinational (i.e. mostly US dominated or with fealty to no nation) corporations and, alas, many companies still headquartered in this country if no longer in British ownership.
The receiving enterprises in the Eastern world, especially the far east including China and Bangladesh have working and environmental conditions ranging from outright exploitative through dire to lethal - as those multinational companies who profit the most from this trade have known for years. Each new ‘discovery’ of appalling working conditions, death trap buildings, cancer clusters, suicides and child labour of course comes as another ‘surprise’ to the profiteers.
There is no need for any of this. Trade, like politics, is what we make it. It is what governments allow it to be. These same governments do not allow their citizens to run amok in terms of crime (other than financial) nor should they in terms of the consequences of so-called ‘free trade’. Trade which is free in the sense that multinational profiteers are free to spend their gotten gains as they wish and the displaced workers or those younger people who will now not get a proper job are free to take a zero hours contract. In these ways, we’re all in it together.
The globalised companies take full advantage of slack or absent regulation and their ability to play one country off against another through lack of international co-ordination and covertly compliant governments. One company starts off-shoring jobs and the others, equally devoid of conscience but not of greed, follow suit with their erstwhile employees herded to the edge of the cliff like lemmings.
Ideally globalisation should be unwound – as I have argued in other posts on this blog. Globalisation didn’t arise overnight nor can it be got rid of quickly, but for western governments to plead powerlessness in the longer term is both defeatist and false. They may be thinking more of their campaign contributions.
But if we are stuck with globalisation, let us at least make it two-dimensional. This second dimension is an effective international tax regime to net the multinational tax dodgers, force them to pay a reasonable rate of tax and get rid of the parasite tax havens that facilitate them. In addition, a worldwide financial transactions tax would raise substantial revenue from a sector that can well afford to pay. Needless to say, the British Government is opposed to it but other countries may yet make a start.
And in future, when politicians and business big shots urge the embracing of globalisation let them embrace the two dimensional version in which they show some decency, social responsibility and some awareness of a common good beyond themselves.